CTAC is part of a team that is working with Ramsey County to apply for ARRA broadband stimulus funding. The project took a giant step forward last week when the St Paul City Council voted to approve the the Office of Technology and Communications to submit an ARRA NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grant request.

The project will bring a fiber network to government agencies throughout Ramsey County as well as open up dark fiber to local Internet service providers so that they in turn can offer faster broadband service to area residents and businesses. It’s an opportunity to streamline government processes and improve the market offerings through a public-private partnership.

You can learn more in a recent article from the Pioneer Press or the Minnesota Fiber Exchange web site.

CTAC is working with Dakota County on their play for the Google Gb.

Dakota Future, Dakota County CDA and our Dakota County communities will be seeking the Google Gb fiber network investment for Dakota County. Google Gb would bring $300 million of private sector investment to Dakota County, attract new tech-savvy residents and help Dakota County become a magnet for innovative companies.

You can show your support by joining the Dakota Future Fiber Facebook and LinkedIn groups and checking out the www.dakotafuturefiber.com web site.

More information is available online.

We’re hosting a party in Dakota County on the night of the big Intelligent Community Forum Smart7 announcement…

Dakota County has already been named a Smart 21 Intelligent Community. Please join us for the announcement of the TOP SEVEN INTELLIGENT COMMUNITIES to see if we continue in the competition for Intelligent Community of the Year!

Wednesday, January 20, 4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Enjoy! Restaurant

Complimentary Hors d’oeuvres with cash bar.
Please RSVP to info@dakotafuture.com

Dakota Future’s Executive Director Bill Coleman and Chairwoman LaDonna Boyd were interviewed by Jeff Achen for This Week Live, a web show for Burnsville, Eagan, Apple Valley, Rosemount, Lakeville, & Farmington.

The ThisWeekLive show is just one example of the media attention brought about with the Intelligent Community Forum project, a great consequence to a project that is also helping us promote and support broadband technology growth in our community.

Dakota Future is a countywide economic development organization in Dakota County MN. Bill Coleman serves as contract executive director. Earlier this year, Dakota Future set a goal to be named as a Top Seven Intelligent Community in the annual global competition sponsored by the Intelligent Community Forum. To begin the process, Dakota Future completed a benchmarking exercise that would enable comparison with the top seven finalists of the past four years. By completing the benchmarking, Dakota Future also entered the competition for the 2010 Intelligent Community.

We received the benchmarking results a week ago and were encouraged that our goal would be in reach if we put our mind to it. We established teams to work on each of the five intelligent community elements and set a work schedule to get our house in order in time for a September 2010 application deadline for the 2011 competition.

We are excited to have achieved Top 21 recognition. The Top Seven will be announced in January; the Intelligent Community of the Year will be announced in May. The Top 21 designation is quite a pleasant surprise to our team and will serve as motivation to our newly formed initiative.

I’m pleased to report that the board of directors of Dakota Future is celebrating a very successful launch of its Intelligent Community Initiative last Thursday and Friday. More than 40 community leaders attended the networking reception on Thursday at Unisys and 75 leaders at the workshop on Friday, we were able to begin the important job of spreading the word and gaining support for our Initiative.

We were excited to learn from our benchmarking that Dakota County exceeded the average scores of the past four year’s Intelligent Community finalists in 3 of the 5 benchmark categories – in broadband, in knowledge workers and in digital inclusion. We have some work to do in innovation and marketing/advocacy.

We have formed teams in the five benchmark areas, plus a leadership team with next meetings scheduled for early November. It is an exciting time for Dakota Future and I’m pleased to be helping them through the process.